Anger Can Be Power

These are extraordinary times. The depth and strength of voters’ conviction that their opponents are determined to destroy their way of life has rarely been matched, perhaps only by the mood of the South in the years leading up to the Civil War.

In a recent column for Bloomberg View, my friend Frank Wilkinson put together a concise explanation:

A lot of Americans were not ready for a mixed-race president. They weren’t ready for gay marriage. They weren’t ready for the wave of legal and illegal immigration that redefined American demographics over the past two or three decades, bringing in lots of nonwhites. They weren’t ready — who was? — for the brutal effects of globalization on working- and middle-class Americans or the devastating fallout from the financial crisis.

Their representatives didn’t stop Obamacare. And their side didn’t “take back America” in 2012 as Fox News and conservative radio personalities led them to believe they would. They feel the culture is running away from them (and they’re mostly right). They lack the power to control their own government. But they still have just enough to shut it down.

Animosity toward the federal government has been intensifying at a stunning rate. In a survey released on Sept. 23, Gallup found that the percentage of Republicans saying the federal government has too much power — 81 percent — had reached a record-setting level.

The movement to the right on the part of the Republican electorate can be seen in Gallup surveys calculating that the percentage of Republicans who identify themselves as conservative grew between 2002 and 2010 by 10 percentage points, from 62 to 72 percent. During the same period, the percentage of Republicans who identify themselves as moderates fell from 31 to 23 percent.

These trends date back to the 1970s. Surveys conducted by American National Election Studies found that the percentage of self-described conservative Republicans rose from 42 in 1972 to 65 percent in 2008, while the percentage of moderate Republicans fell from 26 to 16 percent. Liberal Republicans — remember them? — fell from 10 to 4 percent.

Take the findings of a Pew Research Center survey released four weeks ago. They show that discontent with Republican House and Senate leaders runs deep among Republican primary voters: two-thirds of them disapprove of their party’s Congressional leadership — John Boehner, the speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.

Sometimes you have to turn to the know-your-enemy people to understand what’s going on. The Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is one of the keenest observers of the contemporary Republican electorate. He is conducting an ongoing study called the “The Republican Party Project” for the liberal nonprofit organization Democracy Corps. Greenberg’s premise is that “you cannot understand the government shutdown unless you understand the G.O.P. from the inside.”

Last week Greenberg released the results of six focus groups conducted with evangelical and other religiously observant Republicans (in Roanoke, Va., and Colorado Springs, Colo.), Tea Party supporters who are not evangelicals (Raleigh, N.C., and Roanoke), and moderate Republicans (Raleigh and Colorado Springs).

One of the key factors pushing Republicans to extremes, according to Greenberg’s report, is the intensity of animosity toward Obama. This animosity among participants in all six focus groups is reflected in Figure 2, which represents a “word cloud” of focus group references to the president, with the size of each word in the cloud proportional to the frequency with which it was used.

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Fig. 2Credit DemocracyCorps.com

In the six focus groups of Republican voters, according to Greenberg’s report, “few explicitly talk about Obama in racial terms,” but

the base supporters are very conscious of being white in a country with growing minorities. Their party is losing to a Democratic Party of big government whose goal is to expand programs that mainly benefit minorities. Race remains very much alive in the politics of the Republican Party.

Voters like this, according to the report, are convinced that they have lost the larger battle:

While many voters, including plenty of Democrats, question whether Obama is succeeding and getting his agenda done, Republicans think he has won. The country as a whole may think gridlock has triumphed, particularly in the midst of a Republican-led government shutdown, but Republicans see a president who has fooled and manipulated the public, lied, and gotten his secret socialist-Marxist agenda done. Republicans and their kind of Americans are losing.

In his report for the Democracy Corps, Greenberg describes the Republican base electorate as fearful of being strategically outmaneuvered:

They think they face a victorious Democratic Party that is intent on expanding government to increase dependency and therefore electoral support. It starts with food stamps and unemployment benefits; expands further if you legalize the illegals; but insuring the uninsured dramatically grows those dependent on government. They believe this is an electoral strategy — not just a political ideology or economic philosophy. If Obamacare happens, the Republican Party may be lost, in their view.

Conservative troops blame moderate Republican for what they see as Democratic victories. The Republican base

thinks they are losing politically and losing control of the country – and their starting reaction is “worried,” “discouraged,” “scared,” and “concerned” about the direction of the country – and a little powerless to change course. They think Obama has imposed his agenda, while Republicans in D.C. let him get away with it.

Figure 3 represents a second word cloud generated by Greenberg’s data showing which words came up most often in all six focus groups:

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Fig. 3Credit DemocracyCorps.com

Greenberg’s study found that in the view of many, if not most, Republicans

the Democratic Party exists to create programs and dependency – the food stamp hammock, entitlements, the 47 percent. And on the horizon — comprehensive immigration reform and Obamacare. Citizenship for 12 million illegals and tens of million getting free health care is the end of the road.

“These voters think they are losing the country,” Greenberg said during an Oct. 3 conference call with reporters.

Among Greenberg’s other findings from his focus groups:

The participants “are very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority.”

Republican voters are threatened by Obama and the Democratic Party, but they are angry at their own party leaders. “The problem in D.C. is not gridlock; Obama has won; the problem is Republicans failing to stop him.”

Together, evangelicals and Tea Party supporters comprise more than half the party. Moderates, about a quarter of Republicans, “are very conscious of being illegitimate within their own party.”

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The evangelical and Tea Party wings of the Republican Party combine into a clear majority of Republican voters, and according to Greenberg, they have a mutually reinforcing relationship:

Social issues are central for Evangelicals and they feel a deep sense of cultural and political loss. They believe their towns, communities, and schools are suffering from a deep “culture rot” that has invaded from the outside. The central focus here is homosexuality, but also the decline of homogenous small towns. They like the Tea Party because they stand up to the Democrats.

Tea Party supporters, according to Greenberg’s research, have a more libertarian edge, but their worldview is compatible with the evangelical agenda:

Big government, Obama, the loss of liberty, and decline of responsibility are central to the Tea Party worldview. Obama’s America is an unmitigated evil based on big government, regulations, and dependency. They are not focused on social issues at all. They like the Tea Party because it is getting “back to basics” and believe it has the potential to reshape the G.O.P.

John Boehner is just the kind of Republican leader the hard right dislikes – a deal maker, a compromiser. The Republican primary electorate, with its hold on a solid block of Republican representatives and its ability to recruit and promote challengers, now has Boehner trapped. Personally inclined to find his way out of the face-to-face confrontation – he is, after all, a career politician loath to shut down the government — Boehner has been forced into a confrontation, with less and less room for negotiation with his own party’s warring flanks and with Democrats.

Two days after Obama’s re-election, when Republicans lost eight seats but retained their House majority (232 to 200, with three vacancies), Boehner was asked by Diane Sawyer on ABC, “You have said next year that you would repeal the health care vote. That’s still your mission?” Boehner replied: “Well, I think the election changes that. It’s pretty clear that the president was re-elected, Obamacare is the law of the land.”

The speaker’s pronouncement, if nothing else, signifies a pivot away from Republicans’ efforts to showcase for conservatives their doggedness in looking to repeal Obamacare.

Nearly a year later, on Oct. 6, Boehner admitted that he had been forced to capitulate by constituent pressures on Republican members of the House. Appearing again on ABC, this time with George Stephanopoulos, Boehner said, “I and my members decided the threat of Obamacare and what was happening was so important that it was time for us to take a stand.”

Stephanopoulos asked, “Did you decide it or was it decided for you?” Boehner’s answer:

I, working with my members, decided to do this in a unified way. George, I have 233 Republicans in the House. And you’ve never seen a more dedicated group of people who are thoroughly concerned about the future of our country. They believe that Obamacare, all these regulations coming out of the administration, are threatening the future for our kids and our grandkids. It is time for us to stand and fight.

A determined minority can do a lot in our system. It has already won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Republican House caucus. That is not a modest victory.

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Tom Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of “The Age of Austerity.” His column on demographic and strategic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. During the year leading up to the 2012 elections, he wrote for The Times as a weekly contributor to Campaign Stops. He covered American politics at The Washington Post from 1981 to 2006, and before that at The Baltimore Sun and The Providence Journal. He has written four other books: “Building Red America,” “Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics,” “Power and Money: Writing About Politics” and “The New Politics of Inequality.” He splits his time between Washington and New York.